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Elon Musk's online platform X has sparked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate pictures of females by stripping their attire.

Numerous examples have surfaced where the tool has been used to virtually strip female subjects to make them appear in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in sexually explicit contexts.

Developer Response and Legal Stance

XAI, the organization that created Grok, remained silent to requests for comment, except for an auto-reply response stating "legacy media lies".

A government spokesperson stated that legislation is being brought forward to outlaw nudification technology. Under a new law, anyone who distributed such technology would "receive a jail term and significant penalties".

"The platform is capable of halting these types of misuse if they chose to," said a law professor, adding they "seem to have impunity."

Regulator Position and Platform Capabilities

The communications watchdog Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people seeing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was currently looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.

Grok is a no-cost artificial intelligence—with some paid-for features—which answers X users' queries when they reference it in a tweet.

It is commonly used to offer reactions or further context to other posters' comments, but people on X are also capable of edit an posted photo through its AI image editing tool.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been criticised for enabling users to produce photos and footage with explicit content and sexualised content, and it was earlier alleged to have been involved in creating inappropriate material of celebrities.

"The platform has been allowing the generation and distribution of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have yet to see any challenge by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.

XAI's own acceptable use policy bans "showing likenesses of people in a graphic manner".

In a comment, Ofcom said it was against the law to "create or distribute private pictures or child sexual abuse material" and stated this covered explicit AI images created with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "appropriate actions" to "lessen the risk" of users coming across unlawful material on their services and to delete it swiftly when they are notified of it.